Rhone-Poulenc Rorer speeds drug regulatory submissions

Pharmaceutical giant Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (RPR) is pointing to Documentum's EDMS 98 as a contributing factor in expediting approval for 18 drugs.

Enterprise document management accelerates production, possibly by as much as a year's time, said Margaret L. Mitchell, worldwide director of pharmaceutical drug development IS and regulatory affairs for RPR.

"This enables us to get new drugs to patients who need them as quickly as possible," said Mitchell. "And on the bottom line, considering that some of our individual drugs generate revenues of a million dollars a day, such time-savings can translate into huge profits."

The pharmaceutical company has facilities in over 70 countries worldwide, so one of the goals of managing documents enterprise-wide was to build the potential synergies between far-flung operations while improving collaboration between all business units.

RPR began work with Documentum in 1995 and last year purchased an additional 10,000 licenses